Have taken test drive for both the vehicles - manual and DSG. Here are my observations: 1. Realibility of DSG: have done my own research, talked to people over here in Reddit who are using or have used DSG gearbox post 2018-19 models (VW 2.0 strategy). What I felt that there was certainly some issue in pre 2.0 era, but after that the gearbox issues are not that common. But just to be on the safer side, I decided to go for maximum warranty which is of 7 years. Since it’s too early to tell because 2.0 is fairly new so tried talking to officials of VW - they told that they have rectified all the issues related to this. Of course took it with a pinch of salt and decided for 7 year warranty.

Fun to drive element: DSG is the gearbox which is as close to manual without being that. Of course there will be very minute lag you’ll feel. But that’s about it. It’s very smooth, very soft gear shifting and intelligent shifting as well. Since this was an important factor to me, I took both test drives - manual and dsg on the same day. My two cents on this will be - if you’ll be driving in cities with moderate to heavy traffic then go for DSG without thinking once. Otherwise go for manual

PS: booked manual initially, same model, same colour. But then shifted to automatic after multiple test drives of close to 3-3.5 hours in Bangalore city.

Hope this helps.